Friday, October 25, 2013

"The Calling"

Between 1968 and 1970, I wrote a weekly column for a Toronto
newspaper, penning columns on any topic that fluttered into my
consciousness.For the past coming-up-on
six years, I have been writing a series of five-days-a-week blog posts on the
same subject – whatever comes to my mind.

It seems like I have come “full circle.”A quibbling difference being that working on
the newspaper, I was paid virtually
nothing, and today I get nothing at all. But that’s really just bookkeeping.And an unfortunate allocation of rewards.

In between these identical undertakings, I wrote for
television, where I was compensated so munificently over the years that when it
was determined that I was no longer work-worthy, I had enough stashed away to
negotiate the transition.

I then – after a few years of brooding – returned, via the
Internet, to my original activity – writing anything I wanted.

Which, as today’s post will argue, is my true and actual “Calling.”

I don’t know if you
do this, but sometimes I look at people I know, and it occurs to me that they
are in the wrong line of work.They may
not have missed by a lot.If, for
example, career tracks were laid out in a bowling alley, they could have chosen
(or fallen into) “Lane Seven”, when, it seems to me, they’d have bowled
substantially more successfully in “Lane Five.”(That’s not a precise comparison, but it is my first “bowling alley”
analogy, and, if I say so myself, it is not entirely off the mark.)

Considering one
person of my acquaintance, with their encyclopedic knowledge of the
entertainment industry, they might well have found more satisfaction, money and
acclaim as a chronicler than they did as a participant in the entertainment
industry itself.(Although you would
have to ask them if they’d have been
comfortable the trade-off.)

The distinction is minor – we are not talking “mine worker”
versus “opera singer” – but I believe it’s significant.The outcome, this thesis suggests, may have
been more rewarding had they adhered to a métier more suitable to their natural
proclivities.

I am thinking about this, because once in a while, while
reading Ken Levine’s insightful blog about show business, I will find Ken waxing
nostalgically about the foxhole camaraderie of the situation comedy “Rewrite
Room.”

When I read that, two thoughts come to mind: One, Ken was
exactly in the right place for him.And
two,

I wasn’t.

It is not that I was entirely miscast for the role; this is
more of a “Lane Seven” – “Lane Six” situation.I was actually pretty close.For
which I am eminently grateful to whoever it was who provided me the opportunity.(I am thinking here about God or some
agnostic counterpart rather than Ed. Weinberger who gave me my first sitcom writing
job.)

I did all right in television.But while I was there, I experienced the
gnawing anxiety that I was not exactly in the right place.

You know how Lou Grant hated spunk?

I am not a big fan of camaraderie.

(That was one of my bigger problems with camp.I would have greatly preferred my own cabin.)

It is not human contact, per se, that I am discomfited
by.I am not Howie Mandel.The real problem is working together as a
team.

You’re in a room, your stated goal – to rewrite the script
in a positive direction, and you are required to complete that task – be it
easy or excruciatingly difficult – in that single evening (often extending well
into the following A.M.), and you cannot go home until you do.

If I wrote that description correctly, you will now be
feeling the same “butterflies” that I am currently experiencing myself. They’re retroactive.But they’re “butterflies.”

“Rewrite Night”, by its nature, is a collective undertaking.Writers – sometimes up to a dozen of them –
sit around a table, pitching “story fixes”, clarifications, cuts for time and
funnier jokes.The show runner is “The Decider”
in this situation.Though hopefully
there’s a consensus, they have the last word on what makes it into the script.

But what if you don’t agree?

You’re panning for gold.You slosh away the sand and the sediment, and suddenly, there’s this
sparkling nugget gleaming up from the effluvium.You say to the prospector next to you, “Is
this gold?” They say, “It sure is!”Sometimes adding the words, “By crackie!” for emphasis.(After which they knock you down and start
panning where you were panning.)

Setting aside “Iron Pyrites” (known on The Lone Ranger and elsewhere as “Fool’s Gold”), gold is gold.Precious metal ascertainment is not a matter
of opinion.There’s a standard concerning
its assessment, triggering universal agreement.There is no,

“I struck it rich!”

“No you didn’t.”

about it.Either you
struck it, or you didn’t.

Not so with comedy.

Comedy, like ice cream, comes in various flavors.Some, like the “Big Three” – chocolate,
vanilla and strawberry – are considerably more popular.As with the most popular ice cream flavors, a
“Big Three” comedy pitch – a gratuitous sex joke, a joke at another character’s
expense, a joke that, although funny, undercuts character or the integrity of
the story – would invariably garner a big laugh in the “Rewrite Room”, guaranteeing
its inclusion in the script.

But what if your comedy is of the “Maple Walnut”
variety?Still an ice cream flavor –
nobody’s pitching “bark” here, which is a tree covering, not an ice cream
flavor – but it is barely in the “Top Ten.”

What if you are blessed with a distinctly “Maple Walnut”-like
mentality?You think in an indisputably
“Maple Walnutty” kind of way.They “get”
you, but they don’t exactly love you.More
importantly, you get them, but you
are not at all convinced that “popular” equals “good.”

There is a disagreement about the pitch.Suddenly, it’s not “camaraderie”
anymore.It’s “Maple Walnut” against the
world!

If you take the thing personally.Which, perhaps, I may have in those cases, a
little too much.

The mature understanding is that the “Rewrite Room”, if
judiciously assembled, includes numerous
flavors, each making its own unique and valuable contribution.A “fruit salad” of ice cream flavors, if you
will allow me to mix naturally grown produce with something confected in a
dairy.

Looking back, it appeared like I was expending enormous
amounts of energy trying to convince others that “Maple Walnut” was, in
reality, the “One True Flavor.”(While
subduing inner doubts that “Maple Walnut” belonged in the “Rewrite Room” at
all.)Fearing all the time they might
agree with what I was concerned with in the foregoing parentheses and summarily
dismiss me from the business.(Which,
though advancing years played a part in the process, they eventually did.)

In school, I was never graded highly on “Plays Well With
Others.”My real “Calling” is writing alone, where the “Final Word” is my own,
and myself and the arbiter are rarely in dispute.

It’s not a question that it’s easier.It’s what I was actually meant to do.

When I made a big pest of myself on “Rewrite Night”?It was not the other writers I was upset
with.I was upset about missing my
“Calling.”

3 comments:

It strikes me that you would have been much happier - though far less wealthy - in the British system, where a single writer or writing partnership writes all the episodes in a series before production starts. Much shorter seasons, of course, but much more individual in terms of voice and sensibility. (Today's US cable channel shows are somewhat similar.)

Yes, I believe Wendy Grossman is right. Perhaps you would have been happier going from Toronto to London, and writing TV there, where you would have all the time in the world to write a season of 6 shows. Fawlty Towers has only 12 episodes, but they're distinct and unique.

Rewrite rooms, much like comedy clubs, sometimes thrive on fast, loud and dirty.